Photographer Focus #10: Christine Spengler

Christine Spengler’s first camera wasn’t hers. It was her brother Éric’s. A Nikon with a 28mm wide-angle, the kit of a fashion photographer, and in 1970 she borrowed it in Chad and took her first photograph. She had never looked through a lens before. Chad, Toubou fighters, © Christine Spengler/Sygma/Corbis, courtesy the artist The picture is simple: Toubou fighters armed with Kalashnikovs going to the front hand in hand. It was taken in Bardaï, in the Tibesti, during the Toubou revolt. She was a young Frenchwoman of Alsatian origin, as far from being a photographer as you can get while holding a camera. The two of them, brother and sister, were arrested as suspected spies and spent weeks in prison. When they came out, Éric told her: “You are the strongest of us two… You will be the witness and the war correspondent.” Her answer became her career. “I will learn my profession in the field and I will become a war correspondent to bear witness to just causes.” She was born in 1945 to an…

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